The new season of "Heroes" is upon us (three weeks away) so let's start a new thread. Unlike previous "Heroes" threads that started with a ton of hype and enthusiasm though, let's be humble and come in with realistic expectations that this is likely the last hurrah for Tim Kring's show. Ratings are down, budgets have been cut and expectations are low. I don't know about you but last season reading/checking viewers' reaction was as much fun (if not more) than the show itself. Hopefully Kring & Co. (minus gone-for-good Bryan Fuller) can pull a previously-unknown writing superpower and right what has been wrong with the show for two consecutive seasons (or, as some would argue, from the very beginning of the show).

What's new for Season 4? I won't post here the already-known backstory of S4 (I'd rather experience it new as it airs to see of it jives) but here's a quick recap of what they've been doing over the summer to get ready for 9/21:

The problem with Heroes is that they don't know how to resolve a storyline. It's almost like they just come up with a cool idea, and just throw it in without worrying about how they'll ultimately resolve any problems it creates.

That and they can not get the characters to do battle in the finales. You build up Peter and Sylar as two powerful beings all season 1, and then they barely fight. What little fights occur happen behind closed doors so they don't actually have to bother showing us anything. Like Peter/Sylar in the future during season 1, and Sylar and Nathan in Season 3 with Claire looking through the keyhole or something.

Superheros are meant to fight their arch-enemy, and we're supposed to actually see it, that's the pay off for building up the tension between them.

Season 4 needs to come out full steam ahead or it might not even last a full season.

The garage/ice scene didn't get nominated? That's surprising as hell...I thought that was fantastic.

Per our semi-regular poster vfxproducer (a self-professed "Heroes" insider), "Cold Snap" was submitted for nomination but the Emmy judges went with the season premiere instead: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post16844285. Emmy judges are just plain weird!

"Cold Snap" was submitted for nomination but the Emmy judges went with the season premiere instead. Emmy judges are just plain weird!

No, they are smart. The two hour season premiere had much more complex and varied work than Cold Snap. Cold Snap was flashy, but the premiere had Tokyo exploding, Tracy freezing William Kat, a couple of pretty cool moments of Hiro and Daphne (one with frozen time, one with her super speedster powers), Peter rescuing Claire from being hit by a train, lots of fire effects, and a lot of "invisible" set extensions. And in general, it was less stylized and more photo-real, which is harder to do.

By the way, if anyone is interested, there is a very good special feature about my department on the season 3 DVD set. It has me and a bunch of our other VFX crew talking about working on various shots, with a lot of before and after examples. I think it is on the third disc, and is called "Completing the Scene". I don't have the DVDs, but I've seen the feature. For those who've seen it, that's me at the end talking about how exited we are to work on the show.

I still haven't finished the 2nd half of the 3rd season, and after reading these comments it's looks like I shouldn't!

Speaking honestly... I watched it... but I couldn't tell you much about what I watched.

There was so much ret-conning in season 3, that arguably season 4 will either have to go back to basics OR will retcon all the previous retconning... either way, it's difficult to argue season 3 as "must watch" in order to understand the new season.

Season 3 of Heroes showed flashbacks that couldn't have happened given information presented in Season 1. Similarly, characters in Season 3 behaved counter to their previous behavior and essentially previous behavior was ignored in some cases and no attempt to explain, as if the Heroes producers knew their old audience was gone so they felt no need to hang onto continuity with the new audience.

The first season rocked, but the finale killed it. It hasn't been the same since that last episode of the first season. I went ahead and watched the second season with of course disappointment, and I stopped watching the show when season three came around (although I did watch a couple of episodes from flipping channels).

The disappointing thing for me is that the show had so much potential, but instead flopped. Simply amazing.

I have re-watched about two-thirds of Season 3 via NF's HD streaming. It has been a little better the second time around, although some of its more preposterous plot points were still hard to take. I just hope the writers are a little more disciplined this season than they were last.